A research lab inside the U.S. Navy tasked with dreaming up the future of the armed force has been busy working on a new command center design. It’s suitably high tech–and is undeniably influenced by Star Trek.

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The room was dreamed up at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SPAWAR), a unit tasked with creating an “unfair advantage” over enemy forces in future conflicts by tackling things like network-enabled warfare and management, systems design and so on. For months they’ve been working on the Command Center of the Future, in an attempt to modernize the traditional massive command centers, which are packed with desks and equipment.

That created several challenges for the designers to tackle, and they could have pulled inspiration from plenty of war rooms that already exist. But the SPAWARs team-members appear to have borrowed at least a few ideas from Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise NCC-1701D. Check out the comparison images below:

The CCoF has a giant 135-inch viewscreen….

With modern systems, the key decision makers needn’t be in the same room–teleconferencing, media feeds and computer equipment are laced throughout the room. Enterprise‘s Observation Lounge, in particular, bears a striking resemblance to the CCoF:

The design of systems like the CCoF is hugely important, and a much over-looked aspect of military research, as the media tends to focus on more whiz-bang stuff like rail-guns and lasers. The CCoF will undoubtedly play a serious role in the management of future conflict situations…it’s just that the sci-fi references are so plain.

If you’re still in doubt, check this out: Soon the CCoF’s control screens will be multi-touch enabled. All we need now is for someone to dream up an operating system like the Enterprise’sLCARS, and our future military commanders could start thinking about wearing a little more spandex.